Page:Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry - 1887.djvu/125

Rh, wherefore have ye not come to cheer me in my lonesome home, where all I have is two bairns to keep sadness from my fireside? My husband is sailing on the great deep, and has not blessed my sight these three long years; mickle need have I of some one to soothe my widow-like lot. I could find ye something like Scripture warrant for such kindness which ye wot not of." And the woman went her ways; the man tarried but a little while; and the woman of the Rowantree-burn departed also, admonishing me to remember her words, and do as she had desired.

It was on the third evening after I dreamed my dream that I thought on the woman's words; and I debated with myself if such seekings after future events by means of charms and spells were wise and according to the Word. But old beliefs, and legendary stories, and the assurances of many wise and venerable people, have ever proved too hard for the cunning of wisdom and the pure light of the Gospel; and I thought on my grandmother, to whom the person of my grandfather, then in a remote land, was shown in a vision one Hallowmas Eve, and so I went my ways. It was near midnight when I reached the Ladye's Lowe, and, seating myself on the place where I now sit, I looked sadly to the heaven, and sorrowfully to the waters. The moon had arisen with her horns half filled; the stars had gathered around her; the sheep lay white and clustering on the hill-sides; the wild swans sailed in pairs along the quiet bosom of the lake; and the only sound I heard was that of the mother-duck, as she led her swarm of yellow young ones to graze on the tender herbage on the margin of the lake. I had wetted, as the woman bade me, the under-garment of my child, and hung it forth to dry on a little bush of broom, and there I sat watching it and ruminating on my lot, on the sorrows and joys of a mother. Midnight came; the lake lay still and beautiful; the wind was heard by fits among the bushes, and gushed gently over the bosom of the water with a sweet and a lulling sound. I looked and thought, and I thought and looked, till mine eyes waxed weary with watching, and I closed them for a time against the dazzling undulation of the water, which swelled and subsided beneath the clear moonlight. As I sat, something came before me as a vision in a dream, and I know not yet whether I slumbered or waked. Summer I thought was changed into winter, the reeds were frozen by the brook, snow lay white and dazzling on the